NPPF - Preliminary - Pale Fire

[jbor]

on 8/7/03 4:31 AM, Malignd wrote:

> Could N make a poem better than N could make a poem?
> 
> Well, if anyone could ...

There are sequences in the poem which do seem quite "good", such as the
conceit and imagery in that opening stanza, and there are some clever and
playful tropes which are typically Nabokovian, but then there are other
parts of it which seem deliberately terrible, though these don't always
coincide with the bits that Kinbote chastises as weak or self-indulgent.

What's the critical consensus on Nabokov's own poetry?

The character of Shade, both as reflected through the poem and in Kinbote's
biographical notes, also emerges as a somewhat ironic portrayal imo. I
suspect, though can't say for certain, that the poem 'Pale Fire' is intended
as parodic (of Eliot, for example, as much as of some of the more absurd
excesses of the Romantics).

best